


I Can Read You Like the Palm of my Hand, But Your Wrist is a Mystery

by MapacheLuna



Series: Kyouhaba Week - Soulmates Universe [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, KyouHaba Week, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:11:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4797326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MapacheLuna/pseuds/MapacheLuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shigeru knew soulmate marks were supposed to be romantic and mysterious, but he couldn't help but doubt that anyone actually knew what they were talking about when it came to them. After all, he thought his looked like a puppy, but Shinji swore it looked like a rabid raccoon. How was he supposed to take that?!</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Kentarou just wants to get through volleyball club without disappointing his soulmate (even more than he already had), and if that meant keeping his wrist covered until the day he died, then so be it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can Read You Like the Palm of my Hand, But Your Wrist is a Mystery

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S STILL 9/13 ON THE WEST COAST, RIGHT? *Is shot*
> 
> I realized that it was Kyouhaba Week and wanted to jump on the bandwagon, so then I spent most of the day wondering what I wanted to write for Sunday's prompt, but then it turned into, "I really want to expand on the soulmate prompt though, AND I can probably sneak in a bunch of my other favorite pairings into that universe too," which turned into, "Let's just write a themed series for the entire week, set in a soulmates universe" and here we are.
> 
> So without further ado: Kyouhaba Week Day 1: Prompt/Hands

Soulmate marks were weird, there wasn’t anyone who would argue otherwise, but that didn’t make them any less intriguing, or frustrating if you asked Shigeru. His older brother had told him once that he was too young to act that bitter, but Shigeru stood by his stance. Soulmate marks were something that everyone had, an amorphous black symbol on the wrist of the dominant hand that was supposed to be reflected on your soulmate’s. That in itself wasn’t so out of the ordinary, but the part that always creeped Shigeru out was that they somehow gave the impression of shifting, looking like one thing one moment, and then something else the next, all without any actual change to its shape or form.

Additionally, two soulmates could have symbols that look like one thing when they’re alone, yet they’d look exactly the same when side by side. His parents’ were like that; on his mother the mark looked like a cresting wave and on his father like a blooming wide-petal flower, but when he grabbed their hands to compare them, even when he traced his finger along the black edges, he could not for the life of him find any differences in their shapes.

It was unsettling. How was he supposed to find his soulmate if separately their marks looked completely different from each other’s? How would he recognize it, or how would they recognize his? His parents told him that he’d just _know_ once he saw it, but he wasn’t sure that he was convinced.

His own soulmate mark had always looked a little like a floppy-eared puppy to him, but Shinji was sure it looked like a rabid raccoon, and Oikawa had looked at it when they met the first time and had asked if it was supposed to look “So angry, like Iwa-chan when he wakes up after his naps.” Iwaizumi had immediately slapped him on the back of the head and apologized on his behalf before dragging him away, but not before Shigeru had gotten a glance at their own wrists. Oikawa’s looked like a curling smile or a slinking cat, while Iwaizumi’s looked much more shapeless, the only distinguishable feature being sharp edges, like wings, and a swirling inner coil. They didn’t _look_ like a matching set, but what did Shigeru know, he apparently couldn’t even tell what his own mark looked like.

“You’re going to get wrinkles if you keep making that face,” Shinji’s voice brought him back to the present. “You look like Kyoutani too.”

Shigeru wrinkled his nose at that. “Why would you bring _him_ up?” Kyoutani hadn’t been seen around their gym in months; the only reason Shigeru even knew that he was still attending the school was because he’d catch sight of him out of the corners of his eyes sometimes, usually walking around a corner, or ducking into a room before he was even done turning around to check.

Thinking about the other second years usually left him with a bitter taste in his mouth, remembering the way he’d bark at the third years, Oikawa snickering in the background while Shigeru himself wondered if Iwaizumi would be quick enough to get across the gym to stop a fight from breaking out, again. He still didn’t fully understand where all the anger had come from; sure, Kyoutani had the look of a perpetually grumpy person, more so than even Kageyama Tobio, but he hadn’t been so _hostile_ when they’d first joined the club. He could clearly remember the first day of club, reaching across Shinji to shake their fellow first year’s hand, admirably keeping any fear he might have had about the other’s menacing scowl buried deep inside.

_“Kyoutani Kentarou from Minamisan Middle, right? We’ve heard a lot about you.”_ Kyoutani had blinked down at his hand, expression slackening for a beat before he’d finally taken his hand, thick, calloused fingers closing around his own slimmer ones, surprisingly conscientious for someone so rough looking.

_“Yeah?”_ He’d scrutinized his face, brows furrowed almost thoughtfully. _“Anything bad?”_

_“Uh,”_ Shigeru had blinked at him. _“I don’t think so?”_

Kyoutani had snorted like he didn’t believe him, looking away with a jerk of his head. _“Yeah right.”_ But he had been slow to release his hand, and when he finally had, he had just let Shigeru’s fingers slip out of his hold, almost gently, before he’d slouched away. Shigeru had been so confused by the interaction that he hadn’t even noticed that he’d neglected to look for his soulmate mark. Not that it would have made a difference, he’d realized later, because Kyoutani was never seen without some sort of wrist covering, usually a wristband, but athletic tape had been used more than once. He’d only had a little time to let his curiosity peak at that, before it had just been brushed under the blanket of the many irritating things that made up Aoba Jousai’s uncooperative “Mad Dog.”

He wouldn’t deny that he had been slightly relieved when Kyoutani had stopped showing up to practice, but a bigger part of him had been disappointed, why, he didn’t know. He chalked it up to losing one of their valuable assets, or maybe even losing a very interesting puzzle that he had yet to figure out. Hanamaki had once remarked that to be a setter was to be a specific breed of people, inquisitive and scarily single-minded. Maybe he was right.

Shinji blinked at him and smiled a little, like he was possibly reading his mind -he had been a setter once, too- before tilting his head slightly to the right. “Cause he just walked in.”

“What?!” Shigeru snapped around, and sure enough, Kyoutani motherfucking Kentarou was strolling through the doors, chomping away at his chicken bits like he hadn’t been missing in action for the entire year, ever present wristband snug against his right wrist. For some reason, that just made him angrier.

“Hey! If you’re going to show up after all this time, the least you can do is greet us properly!”

* * *

 

After finally getting Iwaizumi between himself and Oikawa, Kentarou finally took a moment to look around, noting wryly that nothing had really changed in the time that he’d been gone. Sure, the first years were new, but the skittish looks on their faces weren’t, nor were the wary looks on the third years’ -excluding Oikawa’s disturbingly happy expression,- and especially not new were the looks of slight disdain and concern on the second years’ faces. Even the anger he could see shifting the set of Yahaba’s jaw wasn’t new; it had become a constant addition to his pretty face in the last few weeks leading up to his abandonment of the club. From the corner where he was stretching he could also just make out the soulmate mark on his wrist, facing him from where Yahaba had his hands propped on his hips, back pointedly turned towards him. That hadn’t changed either.

Kentarou stood up, adjusting his wristband and resolutely pretending he couldn’t see Oikawa eyeing him with an owlish tilt of his head from a few feet away. The only person on the team that had gotten close to seeing his mark had been Oikawa, and that was because he was probably made of black magic and could materialize behind people at will, catching him when he was washing his hands in the bathroom once.

_“Well, that looks familiar,”_ He’d tapped his finger to his lips thoughtfully, completely ignoring Kentarou’s surprised yelp and subsequent heaving breathes as he tried to get his heart back under control after suddenly seeing Oikawa’s demon face appear in the mirror behind him. _“Where have I seen that before?”_

_“What the fuck,”_ He had wheezed, glaring at the older boy. _“What the hell do you want?”_

_“Why, Mad Dog-chan, I just want you to be happy,”_ He had the audacity to spread his hands innocently in the air, letting Kentarou get a good look at the pointy, slinky, cat thing that was his own mark. _“And if your soulmate is someone I know, then you’re that much closer to meeting them! Isn’t that exciting?”_

_“Don’t call me that,”_ He had snapped, before skirting around him and making a beeline towards the door. _“And just because you find him, doesn’t mean he’ll want me.”_ He hadn’t realized until he was an entire hallway away that he had probably given Oikawa plenty to work with in that single sentence alone, and then he’d had to smack his head on the wall a few times, to the great horror of some passing first years.

Oikawa hadn’t brought it up again, but Kentarou wasn’t stupid enough to think it meant that he had dropped the matter; he was biding his time, he knew he was. He had no way of knowing if he had already figured out who his soulmate was, or that Kentarou had known since the first and last time that he had held the other’s slim hand in his, the stark outline of his matching mark so close to his own covered one that it had sent a throb of confused want through his arm and straight into his chest, like something out of the pages of one of his sister’s shitty shoujo mangas.

In the moment, he had been frustrated that he banged up his wrist enough that he had needed to have a brace on it for their first meeting, but later he had learned to see it as a blessing in disguise. There had been more than a couple of reasons to his leaving the club, but avoiding the cold disappointed anger in his soulmate’s eyes had definitely been pretty high up there. After all, why would he want Yahaba to know that they were soulmates only to have the other reject him anyway?

Unfortunately, avoiding the club forever had never really been in the books, but he had hoped that he could at the very least hold out until Oikawa and his all-seeing eyes were out for the season, but he had miscalculated the older setter’s ambition. Now he could only hope that he continued to keep his mouth shut -or more accurately, that Iwaizumi continued to keep his mouth shut for him,- and that Watari never put two and two together, although he didn’t know how long his luck would hold out on that front. Yahaba’s best friend had been looking at him suspiciously since that first meeting where he had been rendered flustered and mostly tongue-tied, and he had picked the habit right back up once he’d walked back into the gym. He could see him glancing at him even now, although a glare in his direction sent his gaze elsewhere immediately, only to be met with Yahaba glaring right back at him over his shoulder in a heartbeat.

This was going to be a long year.

**Author's Note:**

> Poor Kyoutani. And whoever can possibly be Oikawa's soulmate? :D


End file.
